New nimble, brash SoMa tower fits neatly into surroundings

1of10The 800-foot-tall high-rise at 181 Fremont St. has a spiked top.Photo: Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle

2of10Sculptor Paul Kos (left) and poet Robert Haas collaborated on a public plaza at 199 Fremont St. for which Haas wrote a poem called “Daisylaps” and Kos contributed a 17-foot granite boulder.Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle 2003

3of10The new high-rise at 181 Fremont St. is 802 feet tall with an exoskeleton that ascends skyward in a steady upward motion and has a spike on top of the structure.Photo: Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle

4of10The poetry wall at 199 Fremont St. as it existed before construction of the 800-foot-tall 181 Fremont St. tower next door. The poem now is embedded in granite pavers as part of larger changes, and in place of the stucco wall there’s now a view of 181 Fremont’s glass-walled office lobby.Photo: Mark Costantini / The Chronicle 2003

5of10The new high-rise at 181 Fremont St. is 802 feet tall and has a spike on top of the structure.Photo: Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle

6of10The new tower at 199 Fremont St., with the 1920s-era Pacific Telephone Building in the front on the left.Photo: John King / The Chronicle

7of10The poetry wall in the public plaza at 199 Fremont St., a collaboration of sculptor Paul Koss and poet Robert Haas.Photo: John King / The Chronicle

8of10The new tower at 181 Fremont St., as seen down Natoma Street. The unusual tower was designed by Heller Manus Architects.Photo: John King / The Chronicle

9of10The new tower at 181 Fremont St., designed by Heller Manus Architects, as seen from below.Photo: John King / The Chronicle

10of10The new high-rise at 181 Fremont St. is 802 feet tall and has a spike on top.Photo: Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle

It’s a sign of today’s San Francisco that an ambitious, oddly angled tower has stirred little controversy — even though it jabs 802 feet into the air.

But that’s the case with 181 Fremont St. as it slices upward in the figurative shadow of Salesforce Tower, which rises to 1,070 feet less than a block away. Four other towers are climbing nearby, making 181 Fremont seem like part of a thicket rather than the architectural lightning rod suggested by the diagonal beams that culminate in a 50-foot spiked spire at one corner.

We’ve reached a state of affairs south of Market Street, in other words, where height alone no longer causes a stir. The issue becomes how well or how poorly an individual tower fits within the larger scene. And 181 Fremont, with the troublesome exception of an ill-treated public plaza, is happily nimble despite its size.

The tower’s main claim to fame is that Facebook will occupy all 432,000 square feet of office space within the bottom floors of the 54-story structure. From the 39th floor to the summit are condominiums that start at $3.2 million.

The drama begins at the base, where immense beams fan out from both corners along Fremont Street. The parts could have come from the world’s largest Tinkertoy set, determined strokes that lock into a horizontal truss of similar girth at the 20th floor, then angle back and continue their climb.

It’s a structural approach known as an exoskeleton. The diagonal beams are like a scaffold that holds in place the condominiums and offices and elevator stacks within.

All this makes for steady upward motion, accented by how the upper third of the tower, which holds the condos, narrows to an average of less than 9,300 square feet per floor. Meanwhile, Salesforce Tower’s upper floors average roughly 20,000 square feet each.

No wonder that 181 Fremont, in context, seems almost frisky.

The unusual construction methods shape the tower in other ways. For instance, the tower has a partly open double-height space 500 feet or so in the air. There’s nothing like it on the skyline — and the reason isn’t just to provide a glass-walled amenity terrace but also to dissipate winds and reduce aerodynamic tension on the shaft.

A shaft, rest assured, that is locked into bedrock 265 feet below the sidewalk.

What’s missing at 181 Fremont are the well-integrated design details that give Salesforce Tower its air of subdued elegance, whatever you think of its dimensions. There’s an odd mix of swashbuckling big moves and fussy small ones, such as the sawtooth windows that seem to bristle within 181 Fremont’s structural cage. Or the sleek aluminum that cloaks the exoskeleton — instead of emphasizing the drama, it wants to be suave.

The upside is that there’s nothing formulaic, unlike some of the glassy neighbors. And the immensity on the ground is lightened by unexpected touches. The small triangular vent extending from a nook above the base is one example. The LED lighting within the screens that mask a mechanical floor is another.

The new tower looks particularly good from nearby at street level amid the fast-changing surroundings. Down Natoma Street from the west, it’s a futuristic counterpart to the masonry of New Montgomery Street. And the sleek vertical lines are a counterpart to the horizontal undulations of the soon-to-open transit center next door.

The one real jarring note comes when you leave the sidewalk and enter the passage between 181 Fremont and the brick building that holds Town Hall restaurant.

The passage leads into a public plaza in front of 27-story 199 Fremont St. that dates back nearly 20 years and was a collaboration of artist Paul Kos and poet Robert Hass. The former conceived what he called “an alpine garden in the midst of a busy city,” complete with a 17-foot-tall granite boulder. Hass wrote a poem, “Daisylaps,” crafted to fit a Kos-designed stucco wall behind a line of birch trees.

The boulder remains but the stucco wall is gone — there’s now a view of Facebook’s lobby. Also missing is a moss-shrouded copper basin, which had two faucets that released lone drops of water. “Daisylaps” is replicated in a line of engraved pavers, easy to miss.

The redo had the blessing of 199 Fremont’s owners, who worked out a deal with 181 Fremont developer Jay Paul Co. to allow access to the tight site during construction. Marta Fry Landscape Architects did its best to, in the words of principal James Munden, “maintain the rich history while allowing for the area to be more accessible and versatile.”

Perhaps. But a space that cast a quietly mystifying spell is now just a good public plaza with a really big rock.

The harm done to the original plaza hints at a larger challenge in San Francisco and the Bay Area. There’s room for growth and change, especially with new buildings as confident and ambitious as 181 Fremont. But the existing flavors of where we live deserve respect, or we’ll blur the quirks that make the region distinct.

Overall, 181 Fremont is a welcome addition to its setting, and to the skyline. If the developers can find a way to revive a bit of Kos and Hass’ lost magic — at least a display showing how the “Daisylaps” wall once looked — the result will be better still.

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic, taking stock of everything from Salesforce Tower to public spaces and homeless navigation centers. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of two books on San Francisco architecture, King joined The Chronicle in 1992 and covered City Hall before creating his current post in 2001. He spent the spring of 2018 as a Mellon Fellow in Urban Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.